Couch Surfing at 70

I had a vision. It’s this: Rosa Parks is sitting on the bus. The bus destination window reads “Further”. Something approaches Rosa and says, “What is this?” She answers, “East gate, West gate, North Gate, South gate.” In other words, all of it. Fool.

Turning cartwheels ‘cross the floor….

For the weekdays in the month of April I’m going to try for something different here in the Blog. As of right here today, Thursday, March winding down, I’ll describe the entries I plan to post every April Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, as “Lateral stories”. Perhaps, if time allows in the coming days…

Then this shows up from upon the coffee’d recliner — “I have a lot to offer, and not much more than closet space from which to offer it.” For me, this observation about me is something of a refutal of the (me) thought that I don’t do enough out there in the world, while piggybacking…

I came upon a Ted Talk video on YouTube later last night titled “Don’t Do Your Best”, the talk presented by a man named Keith Johnstone. The description names him a “world renowned improvisational theater instructor”. I listened for a couple of minutes, remembered the hour my phone wake-up was set to tweet this morning,…

Back when I was drinking I’d like to drive around, killing time on a Saturday night, with a beer cracked open between my legs, the rest of the six-pack of talls over there in the passenger seat. I’d listen to oldies. With every mile traveled I would tell a lie. To the six-pack. To me.…

Here’s some of it. Noticeably ongoing germs, a schedule for CPR/FA, promises of good day sunshine, and me, tucked in the room most of this weekdays week. I shook hands with Joan Baez once on the Venice Beach walkway, it was 1977, or at least – memory cells a bit fuzzy this Friday – told…

I have a Zen Koan teacher. Sarah. She’s out there in Colorado Springs, CO. I’m over here in San Diego, CA. Zoom invites and allows us to look at each other and say back-and-forth stuff once a week for 20 minutes. I donate to her Sangha as part of that arrangement. I was thinking about…

Pretty seriously under the weather this morning. My mind feels like crinkled up wrapping paper and cellophane. My Morning Pages, if released to the public, could be a one-way ticket to the funhouse. Interesting quandary of going with the flow when the flow don’t want to go. With scheduled, they say, possibly even sunny breaks…

Pouring down rain, Tuesday, 5am. Here comes the Albert Hammond song – “It Never Rains in Southern California”, with its fateful chorus rejoinder, “Man it pours.” Then there’s Chicago’s “South California Purples”, and Terry Kath’s soulful moan, “Thought this was a warm place. I must be in the wrong place.” There’s lots of songs about…

It’s a Monday. Another Monday. Something of grace allowed me to wake up into it. Something of grace allowed me to walk in the mist from Ann’s place back to my car a few blocks away, hips, legs, knees, big and little toes, still showing up for the big dance. Brain remembering the way. I…

I’ve had this thing with yellow flowers. Both this winter and once sometime toward the tail end of last summer. Back then I had come from the Pacific Ocean, I was carrying my boogie board, a wet towel and dry tank-top draped over a shoulder, walking on Brighton Ave back to my faraway parked car.…

Here is a line from this morning’s Koan: “A wind boat, having loaded the moon, bobs on autumn waters.” Here’s a line from another Koan: “A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.” When I drive south on North Harbor Drive toward the city I pass 10 twisty, gnarled trees on my…

It’s 3:18 in the afternoon and I just realized and remembered I have yet to do today two of the most important things in my life. They are, post here in the Blog, and dance to the music. So here comes this, and in barely the time it takes for the second-hand of a clock…

Yesterday I struggled with technology – computer stuff. Yesterday I struggled with changing car insurance, and with so much money flowing out and away this March, a cause for a potential shift in insurers. I simply do not “do” systems, and technology, well. Perhaps I come to them already alive with those stories. I’m a…

I’ve been showing up most days for a YouTube video created by a woman named Adriene, who leads a class in chair yoga. Yoga in a chair is not the only yoga I’m showing up for these days. But it’s the primary place of that physical encouragement. Adriene closes her class asking watchers and joiners…

I went on a long walk yesterday, through the Banker’s Hill neighborhood of San Diego. Wild and twisty, sunlit, hummingbirds and sparrows and finches my companions. Across and under bridges, dangling in the day. Back at my car, it felt wrong to leave. Off. It was not me clinging or grasping, at least mostly not…

Last night I traveled, by something other than magic, up to Oakland to be part of a Zen Koan conversation. Think of this sixties happening – a “Be-In.” Just show up and be there. I show up to “be” there nearly every Wednesday night. I never understand what’s being said. Last night’s Koan went like…

Yesterday someone said they’d been encouraged to sit – it could be meditation – in their bare feet for five minutes. To come in closer contact with the Earth, kind of regardless of the medium on which the bare feet rested. She said she was going to try it. Being more and more open to…

Yesterday’s Blog post mentioned magical thinking. I’d like to riff on it just a bit more. If you want to be all serious and technical and properly realistic, I suppose, the term “magical thinking” belongs squarely in the realm of mental health. Or, better said, an example of a problem with mental health. The kind…

Monday – this is a day for magical thinking.

I read a line in a book this morning which said this – “We don’t heal our symptoms; our symptoms heal us.” Quoting this here isn’t me being all heavy or philosophical or esoteric. Trust me. The ability to think deeply intellectually about this or that continues to depart. Something like this line from one…

This is today’s post.

Pouring down San Diego rains preclude the morning walk. What’s a kid to do? Begin dancing – fool! So’s I did. There’s me, gray light through the window, lit-less room, swaying, praying, just saying. Sashaying on the carpet to Major Lance’s “Monkey Time”; “Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley” with Robert Palmer; and the Beach Boys…

I had very little sleep last night, though I don’t feel especially tired right now. I crawled into bed just after 8:30, and continued to lay there entirely awake as the phone told me Monday had slipped into Tuesday. My alarm was already set for 2:59, and when it sounded I got up to begin…

Something had me take Mary Oliver’s “Red Bird” book of poetry off the bookcase shelf Friday, and I got around to opening and reading from it this morning. Her poem “Sometimes” has this as its fourth stanza: “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” When I was the Housing Director…

I received a call later last night from a mom farther away than I’d like to drive, asking if I might possibly want to work with her kid, as something of a life support, deal with his issues – “You’ve got issues, kid – kindly and with clarity as a helper. Join the team –…

You and me and rain on the roof. I saw the ‘Lovin’ Spoonful’ once, a zillion years ago, at a place called “The Surf” in Hyannis, Massachusetts, which is perhaps the most “city-like” town on Cape Cod. At least I think I did. I think they played with ‘The Byrds’ too, and another sweet group…

Let’s see. Windy, windy, windy morning walk, bundled up and eyes wide alert for flying palm fronds. Sweet, sweet San Diego (riff on Rocky Horror). Ran into Diego – “Hola mi amigo.” It rained, then the sun shone. Meanwhile, back here in the room, laying on the floor with wicked long stretches, dancing around with…

Sunday morning I made something of a decision to try and live the coming seven days experientially more through my body, less through my mind. Maybe I could put it like this — feel more and think less. Which points in the right direction, but is not truly accurate. It seems, to this ancient mind,…

Heard yesterday: “The silence just spreads out, and we belong.” Just that, this morning.

Here’s today’s question – Who wants to read a post from November of ’21? Dredged up from the archives, cause yesterday I had something of a rebound connection with the agency about which this post was originally written. Here you are: The Dignity of Risk I don’t believe I’ve ever heard those three words put…

It’s funny. How little nudges in my life have sent me down this path or that one. Through this thrown-open window, slipping out that cracked-open door. Sometimes these little nudges – maybe a better word is caresses – sometimes they’ve been the usher into a new, upside-down world from the one a week ago; a…

The other day, someone asked me why I was trying to learn a conversational level of Spanish at this time – Saint Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, MA birth certificate says 74 – in my life. I answered that there is some sense of honoring for me, honoring folks whose primary language is Spanish with…

Well, this is awfully late to post here in couch surfing, and some of it’s all-day don’t no what to say, some is plain old forgetting – why, shut your mouth, insolent child, forget the Blog? Lordy – and some is a nearly two-hour visit here with the barista next door named Daniel (formally and…

When James Brown sings, “Get up offa that thing and dance ’til you feel better,” I wonder what’s “that thing” he’s talking about? A chair? A pogo stick? Self-pity? A Joshua tree? The nest of seven spiders? A self-diagnosis? A yoga mat? My favorite blue recliner? Spilled milk? The place of lack? Yesterday, in the…

Why all this insistence on joy?

It’s 8:24 in the morning, a sunny Wednesday here in San Diego. I’ve gone from mostly empty-minded – not a bad place – to assuming the role of reporter. Here’s the report: Got up at 4:05 with the alarm, sat zazen (meditation’s just sitting) two times, back to back, 19 minutes each. Made and drank…

I need money. It’s a Zen statement. The sky is blue. Birds fly. Rivers are long. I need money. On a very arduous walk yesterday afternoon, the purpose of which, beyond the joy and goodness of righteous exercise, was hopefully sweep decades of cobwebs out from my mind, the thought came to me that perhaps…

Early, early this morning three songs came lollygagging into my head – “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” by Chicago; “Waterfront” by Simple Minds; and “Lose This Skin” by The Clash. Stuff like that happens and I wonder about, maybe, a metaphor for the day, or something. I went on my morning walk…

I was thinking about the old TV show Kung Fu with David Carradine and his Master Fu Manchu kind of guy, who always prefaced his thoughts by calling Carradine “Grasshopper.” I liked that, and every once in a while through these decades it’s come back and I’ve called someone, like a group-home kid I was…

In 2011, having just quit the last job with its (the quitting) inherent vow of poverty – Social Security – I bought a used copy of Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” on Ebay. It was cheap, and it changed my life. The book’s something of a 12-week ‘course’, with two primary suggestions – take yourself…

Most mornings when I ask for help to be wide open to the offers from that day, I don’t say “all the offers.” I was thinking about it a while ago, and wondering if leaving the “all” word out is some kind of conditionality. Something like leaving the back door ajar. Like some escape route…

At the tail end of a pajama party Sunday morning I wrote in a steno pad, “Buy James Brown’s Greatest Hits”. An hour later, walking back into this room, I went right to the computer, opened Amazon, and did just that. Ten bucks. The CD was delivered amidst squalls in the rains of yesterday. I…

I’d say daily blogging – Mondays through Fridays – has changed my life. It was a spontaneous thing, back January 22, 2021, to show up at this space every weekday going forward and try to write engagingly, and with some reward for the reader, how I was that day – what I called just over…

I began writing, yes I did, all the way back to a column in the high school newspaper. On to a college paper, stumbling into high school sports stringing on both coasts. Off and on Blogs – this one more than four years now. Even writing for work: grant proposal stuff, treatment and service plans,…

“Meow” feels like the all of it this Thursday.

While writing my Morning Pages earlier – having a bit of an unexpected come-to-Jesus meeting with myself – it came to me that, regarding my painting and drawing and neither going on, I have been giving nearly all my energy to why those beloved acts can’t and aren’t happening, instead of giving that energy to…

Coming off Fern Street and down Date, I heard the tweet of a hummingbird above. I stopped and looked up and there wasn’t a hummingbird in sight – little magicians, here and gone. There was, though, a small hawk sitting among bare branches about 10 feet up. I said out loud, “Oh my head,” which…

additions to my life as of my birthday…

I guess if I’m going to pick a song for this day it’s gonna be “Everyday People” – Sly and the Family Stone. All these years. All this music.

Last Friday morning my long-time friend Gay in Amesbury, Massachusetts messaged me to let me know Kevin Lawless had passed away. He was living in Florida. He was 73. I met Kevin in 1975 or ’76, somewhere in the miasma of youth-serving agencies north of Boston. I became a co-worker at the Tri-Town Council for…

My almost always route for my morning walk is to go over to 28th – there’s the Starbucks at 28th and B – turn north and walk past Ash and Birch and take a right onto Cedar. Over a block and another left, north on Granada, which sends me on my way uphill a long…

I woke yesterday with this strange mark on my left forearm. Significant in size, it immediately made me think of the silhouette of a sitting cat. A few moments later I saw the silhouette of a sitting rat. Cats, rats…silhouettes and mysteries. I didn’t and don’t remember banging my arm in a way to cause…

My pal Milky Dent called me very early today. Before most of my morning things. Well before hummingbirds welcomed me to the awakening walk. He said, “I have a thought for you.” I asked, “What is it?” He said, “Being old is a disguise.” I thought I heard him chuckling softly as he hung up…